OTHER VOICES

Finally, cellphones are allowed on planes

The federal Communications Commission may permit airlines to experiment with allowing passengers to use cellphones in flight, officials said last week. The agency should do so, and airlines should get on with experimenting. Permission is not requirement; a change in federal rules would not necessarily mean the ruination of air travel for all time.

We sympathize with anyone whose immediate reaction is to recoil at the prospect of having to listen for hours to a loudmouth with unlimited mobile minutes. But the FCC’s move wouldn’t guarantee such an outcome. Rather, it would leave matters to airlines and their passengers, which is as it should be.

The proposal before the FCC would simply admit that there are no dangers or technical complications to transferring voice and data to and from mobile phones in the air, as long as the right technology is on board. Until now, the FCC worried that airborne mobile phone use would interfere with ground-based cell networks. Now that carriers in Europe and Asia have shown it can be done safely, the government’s telecommunications regulator has no sound reason to keep its restrictions. Its rules are outdated, and they should go.

Once gone, airlines and travelers would decide what to do. Carriers would have all sorts of possibilities to suit a range of passenger preferences. They could allow a limited number of simultaneous phone conversations. They could let passengers retrieve data or send text messages but not talk. They could create quiet cabins or designate entire flights as no-phone zones, if that’s what customers want.